Category — The Kids as a Force

This story starts with a carpenter.

No, not that carpenter.

Although, since I’ve had this carpenter working around my house I’ve been imagining Jesus working in his father’s workshop with all the shavings, teaming up to hold a beam in place, giving someone an estimate. “No, that is for the materials only. These are the labor charges.” I wonder what kind of wood he used. Cedars of Lebanon?

I think he was probably taller than my carpenter, who is about five foot two. But probably he wasn’t taller than me.  It’s not likely, anyways.

I hired my carpenter to build a few pieces of furniture that have been missing from our lives.  I designed and drew out the furniture, and then explained each piece, with the help of an interpreter, for about fifteen minutes.  When the furniture came, every bit of it was off in some way, by a foot or six inches; a bookcase that was two feet wide rather than a foot wide.  It happens.  The bunkbeds that I ordered looked great, but the guard rail was completely missing.  The head and foot were missing from the top as well; it was just sheer across the top of the upper bed.  Not so safe.  So my carpenter came back and installed a belated guard rail, and then painted it.

This is where my story really starts.  (That was the preamble.)

The day after the carpenter painted, I was having a difficult morning because too many things were going on and I couldn’t focus on school. I was rushing around, cleaning up, moving the laundry along, trying to get the dishes washed, retelling the kids to get dressed and ready to sit down and read together. Solo had something in his hand; a small packet wrapped in newspaper and I hurriedly took it from him.

Poof!  He and the floor around us were instantly covered in a fine red powder. Powdered pigment, the dye that the carpenter had been mixing his paint with. It was a mess, a really big mess.

I did what I normally do in such circumstances.  I tried to slow way, way down and appreciate the situation.  It was too good of a mess not to share, so I took Solo outside and held him out at arm’s length to show him to our neighbors, two women from Switzerland and Germany who are part of our meditation community. “Johanna!” I called.

She came out and promptly fell over from fright.

Yeah, I hadn’t really considered the fact that the pigment looked a lot like blood.  Oh, okay, exactly like blood. Whoops. When all the fright was sorted out we all admired the mess, and then I went and hosed him down.

That was the introduction to the day.

Later Leafy and Kid A and YaYa and I were headed to the doctor to get treatment for a skin infection that the boys have. The great health that my children usually enjoy prevents me from uttering all the complaining that I could possibly spew forth on the subject of minor maladies like skin infections, which are annoyances to two active boys and a busy mama.  But anyways, we were on our way and I had elected to take a taxi because I didn’t feel up to the drive that day. It was a long drive; we were headed to the capital, and it was midday. The sun was high in the sky and all of the ground was baking in it.  And then we got caught in the traffic jam of the decade. We couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back, and soon we found that people were striking, that they had shut down the bridge into the capital.

No one knew when the road would be open again.  Meanwhile, we were stuck there like cockroaches. The kids and I got out and they scrambled up the scrubby hillside to play in the dirt for a minute. We took shelter in the shade of a truck, whose driver stared. All of the people on their way to the airport tried to figure out whether they could reschedule their flights. The pregnant girl from Bombay in the big car in front of us dashed out to throw up in the bushes. The men from the car had a discussion with me about YaYa’s hair. After about an hour, all of the people on the buses started to evacuate and walk.  “How far is it?” I asked Alex, our taxi driver.

“About six kilometres,” he said. I made a quick decision.

“Meet me at the hospital when you get through,” I said.

And we headed off, walking. I carried Leafy, and YaYa and Kid A walked very nicely. It was either walk or bake a while longer, and at least this way we got closer to some of the river breezes. People walked all around us, and when we reached the strike scene I was relieved to see that it was very peaceful. Men were lying in front of traffic with newspapers on their faces. The police weren’t beating anyone. “Oh!” said Kid A.  “So that’s what caused the traffic jam.” Like it’s totally normal for people to lie on the road in front of traffic.  I’m amazed sometime at what my kids take in stride.

The bridge was hard because there was no shade.  We were very hot and thirsty.  We felt like pilgrims on our way somewhere, heading through the desert or gypsies moving through a dusty plain.  And then there was the river and a barge moved downstream, with three great pyramids of dirt.  We ran to get to the place where it would intersect the bridge, so we could stand right over it as it passed underneath. After the bridge we put our hands out and stopped traffic to cross the streets.  It still wasn’t really moving, even on this side of the bridge, so it wasn’t hard.

We stopped in a shady little restaurant and had water.  We washed our hands and faces. We found a rickshaw and wearily arrived at the hospital, a little flushed.

I guess it just makes me think about parenting and what it means.  I can’t always get things to run as smoothly as I want them to, at my house. I keep up with the laundry and then suddenly lapse and no one has any clothes. I wake up to dishes in the sink after collapsing in bed at night. There are often bits of cut up pieces of paper all over the floor. Sometimes I pick things up myself that the kids should be putting away, because I just can’t bring myself to try to get them to do it.

I have this ideal where everything flows along and we are all clean and no one has skin infections or is taking medications and we sit down gently to read together without red dye on our clothes.

But a lesson for now is that sometimes parenting is walking along a hot road with my children, and how they see me react. Can we be curious still? Will we run to see the barge float right under us, watching the barge man watch us on his pyramids of dirt? We will, and we did, and so we move along in wonder and love, not clean all the time, and in stops and starts.  But I think we are learning the right lessons, all of us, still.

And Solo is alright, just the slightest bit pink.

Each of these is for one of my children… can you tell which is which?

*

water on the floor

experiment gone awry

clean it up yourself

*

forceful affection

your love is exuberant.

don’t jump on our heads

*

you talk all day long

conversing with no real words.

you don’t seem to mind

*

imagination

boy with a cape and a sword

come back to earth soon

*

(I am slowly getting my voice back, and slowly getting better. Thanks for the warm wishes.)

On Getting Well

I almost never get sick, which is why it’s frustrating that for days lately I’ve felt knocked down by different viruses.  My digestive system is perfect.  Lovely.  Plenty of fiber, no yuckiness.  I won’t get any more detailed than that, but let’s just say that I take pride in my digestive accomplishments.  But these weird viruses- lamo.

Like this last one, which threw me for a loop.  It started with a headache so strong that I couldn’t get out of bed.  I was only in a large amount of pain (as opposed to a montrous amount of pain) if I lay very still.  When Chinua passed me Solo so that I could nurse him, he of course was his usual exuberant self and ended up knocking his head against mine a few times. It felt like he had brought an ice pick into the bed with him. Good gracious he’s a violent baby.

Anyways, the next day it had moved into my upper spine, and as we walked down into town to celebrate a friend’s birthday, every step vibrated in different pain decibels all around my vertebrae.  The next day?  Lower back and kidneys.  Very strange.  Very mysterious.  No fever.

Today I’m feeling better but still not myself.  I’m going to get well, take supplements, eat sprouts, get my immune system back in order. And that concludes my long illness memo.  Thank you for attending.

On putting the right pants on

This morning Solo woke up and popped his face next to mine, making that wrinkly-nosed-bared-teeth grin that he’s making in the photo a couple of posts down.  (He starts in his bed and ends up in mine.  Sometimes I wake up next to him with virtually NO MEMORY of collecting him from his bed in the middle of the night.)

As I was rubbing at my eyes, trying to wake up, I noticed Leafy lurking around the doorway (as he does if he wakes up first) wearing the pants that YaYa had been wearing when she went to sleep the night before.  It was strange.  I rubbed away and tried to figure it out, then gave up when I felt the headache coming back from the strain.

The kids of course busted their guts laughing when they saw Leafy wearing YaYa’s pants.  And then she said, “But I peed in those pants!!”  Ha ha ha.  Turns out she peed in the middle of the night, got up, took her pants off and put new pants on, and then when Leafy woke up and his pants were peed on, he took them off and put on a random pair of pants that he found on the floor- YaYa’s pee pants.  (Are you still following me?)

It’s a regular pee party around here!  Come on over, we can all pee in our pants and then switch!  Like musical chairs!  Only stinkier.  (Sigh.)

On Marathons

Today, when we were sitting around the table doing schoolwork, Leafy set up a little computer and speaker set for himself.  The computer was a small yellow wooden box that we use for toys.  The speakers were some math manipulatives.  He set them up on the floor, and proceeded to beat box and dance for about half an hour.  It was very cool and very distracting.

Then he pressed an invisible button on the computer and speakers, and said, “Whoa, I was just dancing for four days.”

On bathing

I’ve finally figured out how to get my older kids really bathing themselves.  In water shortages, it doesn’t work to let them hop into a shower themselves, because the WHOLE WORLD is at stake if they let that water run too long and I can’t flush a toilet later.  And then sometimes the showers don’t work, the hot water in the bathrooms doesn’t work, everything is spotty.

But a good old bucket bath is perfect.  I give them a bucket of really warm water, tell them to get wet and soapy and rinse off, and Voila!  Two kids down, two to go.

On Chai

At the heart of every Indian woman is the desire to make good chai.  So when I go to Tripta’s house and she makes chai, she looks at me inquiringly afterwards.  “Ohhhhh.  Good chai,” I say.  “Thank you Didi,” (sister) she replies, with a modestly gratified look.

I know exactly how she feels.  The other day some guys were over, practising music for a concert that they are putting on with Chinua. Wow, such great music, from a British-Iranian guy who’s been playing since he was four, an Israeli drummer, and my husband on mandolin and Saz, playing Celtic songs, gypsy songs, and an Egyptian folk song: Beautiful.

I made chai, and then while in the kitchen I heard one of the guys raving about it.  “Perfect ginger, perfect sugar, not too strong… Perfect.”

I felt rather smug.

On Aging

Isn’t it funny how having kids makes you feel young and old at the same time?  So often I find myself turning into a crone, standing hunched over my cutting board in the kitchen, slicing onions with tears in my eyes, barking “Calm DOWN!” to the kids who are jubilantly racing through the house, destroying everything in their path.  They fall down in fits of giggles, and I’m dismally muttering in the corner, “You better pick that up when you’re done with it,”  and  “I said CALM DOWN!” And I realize that at that moment, everyone else in the house is SO MUCH MORE FUN than me.  I’m raining on the parade.

And simultaneously, I feel very young, because of the sheer ratio of hours of lego play to hours of non-lego play in my life.

On What it Feels Like to Really Swing on Vines through the Jungle

You would get your face scratched by other trees, I would think.  And you would get bugs in your mouth.  And then there would be all those jolts and swoops and thunks.

But then there would be moments of truly flying, when the whole jungle flows past you and you can see it so clearly and smell the flowered breeze, and that’s how I felt today.  Just a normal day, but I was feeling better and I could see, again, like for the first time, the true value of what I’ve been given.  Bantering with Kid A, receiving baby kisses from Solo, I laughed so many times today, and I felt so glad.

Some of you may be wondering how my new set up with groceries and babysitting is working.

Groceries:  Awesome.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.  This morning I called down, and forty-five minutes later the groceries were delivered to my door.  I’m paying the coolie personally, and a little more than is normal, so the whole employment bit feels good too.

The only thing:  today I asked for two bhaingan (eggplant), and they heard two kilos. Eggplant is not particularly heavy, so now I have a fridge FULL of eggplant.  I batter fried slices of two of them tonight, and said to my sister… two down, only thirty-two to go.  I exaggerate.   But Kid A couldn’t get enough of the batter-fried bhaingan, so that’s a silver lining.  You gotta love a kid who loves eggplant.  (I was not one of them.)

(Of course, as I said to my husband on that fateful day nine years ago when we ate the cockroach in Bangkok, anything tastes good when it’s fried with garlic and salt.)

Babysitting:  Sometimes I want to pull my hair out.  My writing times tend to be full of so many interruptions that I am tempted to crawl under my bed and never come out at all.  There are water problems, a puppy runs into the house, Solo wakes up. Somebody needs me at the door and it turns out to be some weird masseuse guy with dirty bottles of oil.  “Why did you interrupt me for that?” I ask Ankit. “He said you called him here,” he replied.  Which is a strange business strategy for a masseuse: the outright lie.  Like I’d say, “Oh?  I called you here?  I guess I just forgot!  Okay!  Massage away with your dusty oils and strange tools!”

But there is something about employing someone so that I can write.  I’ve turned into a machine.  I WILL GET MY 1000 WORDS OUT TODAY OR DIE TRYING.  No matter how many interruptions, I’ve been managing.  It’s been good.

Tonight was another story, though.  I asked Ankit to come over at 8:00 so that I could go out with my sister for a little while. He came, and sat patiently while I tried for what seemed like forever to put Solo to bed.  This is how the evening went.

8:30- Finally Solo gets off to sleep. My back is breaking.  (Have I mentioned that this is a very heavy child?)

8:34- I am trying to play a dvd on my computer for Ankit.  I have the wrong hard drive.  Arggh.

8:36- YaYa is “itchy.”  She heard a bug.  Something was on her forehead and that makes her want to cry and cry and cry, because something was on her forehead.  She’s scared of her bed now.  She can’t sleep.

8:46- I’m lying in bed beside YaYa, stroking her face.  She’s still crying, clutching me every few minutes, saying, “I’m sooorrrry,” and “I can’t sleep.”  Finally I ask her if she wants to sleep in my bed.  I move her and it’s like magic; all her itches go away, and sleep comes quickly.

8:56- Success with the dvd for Ankit!

9:00- Finally out the door with Becca, I heave a huge frustrated sigh and refrain from throwing rocks.  Where should we go?  I’m so tired, Solo is teething and I haven’t been getting much sleep.  It seems too hard to walk down the mountain, so we decide to walk over to the closer village.  Maybe we can have a lassi or something.

9:20- “Becca,” I say, “this restaurant seems depressing to me.”  We hand the menus back and decide to walk back over to the restaurant near our house.  It’s familiar.

9:35- When we get back to the restaurant, I have to go to the bathroom.  When I get out I see Tripta (the restaurant is on her rooftop) and she laughs at me because my hair is up in a wrap.  She thinks it looks silly.

9:40- The phone rings.  I can hear Solo crying.  “I’ll be right there,” I say.

*

Well, we had a nice hike through the moonlight.  So, that’s how that’s going.  But I’m sure it’s the same for any parents of young children anywhere.  It’s funny, isn’t it?  I feel as though I can stretch so far, with my kids, but when they are up past their bedtimes, I’m like, wait, what?  I was with you all day!  I fed you and watered you and we read together and played!  Now that part’s done!  What’s going ON?

Stttreeeeetttch.  I will one day be the most flexible person ever to roam this earth.  Metaphorically speaking. (Rubs aching back)  Maybe I should get that masseuse back here.

Lately it seems like I am thwarted at every turn.  But not thwarted in love, in company, in fresh air, in greenery, in good food, or in baby kisses.  So every turn is an exaggeration.  What I am thwarted in is concentration and reliable internet access.

Wow, this is a really similar story to so many other that I’ve shared.  Really, Rae? you’re thinking.  Seriously?  You’re having problems with internet access and a clear space to concentrate on writing?  We’re shocked.  No really, we’d never have guessed.

You guys are so sarcastic.  But really, I have so many emails to respond to. (I got your email by the way!  I’m so sorry that I’m late in getting back to you!) And then I sit down to do it and one of the kids starts trying to pull off the head of another of the kids, so I decide to wait until the little lambs are sleeping, and when I finally sigh and settle down to do it, WHAM! a lightning bolt sizzles my computer.  No it doesn’t, but inexplicably the internet connection is down.

So I of course switch gears and sit and show Renee and Cat and Becca home videos of the children that they already see every single day.  Here’s Leafy singing.  Here’s Leafy dancing. Here’s Chinua singing and dancing while driving.  Look how cute everyone is!  Look how little they are! And you get the point.

I do have some real blog posts stuck in my brain- things I want to tell you and show you.  Letters to my kids which I should have posted LONG ago.  Thoughts on waste and what we do with our trash.  (I have lots of thoughts on this- the last year of my life has been spent wrestling with trash and trying to cut down on waste.  If there was a theme song to the year it would be… uh…. some kind of garbage related song.  I can’t think of one right now.)  Thoughts on community, on meditation, on life.

I’m also thinking of starting a new website, because what better thing to do when you have unreliable internet access than start a new website?

*

Today we woke up and Chinua asked me if I wanted to go for a walk.  I said yes, and that is what we did.  We walked to the waterfall in Bagsu- down the hill, another kilometre there, and one back, and back up the hill.  I have superhero kids.  And a Superstar Husband who made the last trek up the hill with a baby in the carrier, a Leafy boy on his shoulders, and a backpack on.

It was one of those memorable days when you are so so tired, but so happy, and you know that you will be talking about the waterfall for a long time, and you are glad that you do things like this, even when they make you tired.  Kind of like life.

(By the way, did you know that I turned 29 almost a week ago?  On my birthday I managed to play pin the tail on the donkey, ride on a seesaw, and ride on a thing that I can’t remember the word for… spinning thing, really dangerous, launches children into the air like sacks of potatoes, like a carousel but not… is there even a name for it?  Anyways, I felt like I turned 9, rather than 29.

And about the seesaw, Kid A says that it’s like a scale for people, and when I was too heavy on my end, he called YaYa over, saying “we need another orange on this side!”  Just a bit of living in India, since I don’t remember the last time I saw a scale with weights in the states, but it’s all they use here.)

Although Leafy’s way of taking part is just ironic on any number of levels.

There are some definite perks to having a family that right now is a bit like Romper Room, and there are some definite drawbacks. One thing about having four children, the oldest of whom is six, and being a homeschooler to boot, is that the moment you turn your head from the dear darling angels, they turn into beasts.

You turn back to them, in shock, unable to comprehend that in four minutes of your inattention they have poured sand into everyone’s hair and spread mashed potatoes over the floor, but it’s true. They really have. Or they have gone and slapped each other and everyone is crying.

Leafy is doing this screamy thing lately, mostly to protect himself and his things from his sweet, strong, and controlling older sister, and his sweet, strong, and domineering older brother, and the sound that he makes causes me to immediately walk out of the room so that I can flush my head down the toilet.

I can’t bear the screamy thing.

The worst form of inattention in my house seems to be Mama’s computer time. Can I get an amen? Because the minute, the very second, that my eyeballs focus themselves on the screen, all of Pompeii erupts in my house and I’m too fragile for Pompeii.

So, I’ve limited computer time to 1) The two seconds that I’m awake before the children are, and I’m thinking, YES, I’m up! They’re not! I’m UP! They’re NO… Oh dang. 2) The two seconds that I manage to stay awake after they go to bed, and 3) Studio time, which is for my novel, and occasionally a blog post. Occasionally. Also 4) the very occasional internet glut, which happens when Chinua asks me if I’d like some time off and I don’t feel the ticker going, telling me to write, write, write. This is the time that I read blog posts, when I get to read them at all.

And when large holidays loom up before us like wildebeests coming out of the mud, those four seconds before the day and after the day are taken up by wrapping and cleaning. Nothing for it, wrapping and cleaning must occur.

This is all a big buildup to say that I didn’t die, neither did my fingers become paralyzed. I did take an only partially voluntary break from the internet.

What’s been going on is Christmas, and giving, and the reading of Christmas stories, and celebrating, the the requisite Christmas cry (I have to cry on Christmas Day, it’s a tradition) and a Christmas party in our backyard which is a little farther along from looking like a construction site, and paper stars with lights in them, Goan style, and wow- we’ve been busy.

I know. I’m all, poor me, I’m forced to actually interact with my children and play games with them, rather than do fun grown-up things like obsess about the yarns I cannot buy and stalk knitters on the internet. Also crafters, although I’ve decided to stop imagining that I am a crafter.

I had to drive to the capital, Panaji, to do my Christmas shopping, which I did for the kids in a tiny toy store with approximately four hundred people who were packed shoulder to shoulder. I sweated and wept, because I hate buying things that are cheap and I had very few choices, but in the end I’m happy with what we got.

Then, yesterday, I decided to make samosas for our Christmas Party, and ended up finishing with a pan of delicious samosas and a vow to never enter the kitchen again in my life. That’s my M.O. Burn yourself out with silly pastry-type foods for large parties.

Anyhow. We all cope in varying ways, and I’m recovering from Christmas (which was actually very small and perfect, although sad because we were far from family) by looking through silly photos of my family. Take this one, for example:

It would be fine, except for the fact that the YaYa Sister is having a moment of crisis.

Or this one:

This one is great. Except that Yaya is still in crisis, Leafy has joined her, Kid A is a little too happy, I look like I’m sharing some cheesy joke with you, and why is everyone barefoot? Also, what is happening to Chinua’s hand?

Or here:

YaYa and Leafy have seen the silver lining behind the dark cloud,  but now Chinua is sharing a cheesy joke and Kid A is facing a direction called AWAY FROM THE CAMERA, and what is happening to my hand?

Or Exhibit D:

Mama’s smiling a little too big, Daddy looks like he doesn’t wan to be there, Leafy’s doing his best Magnum, and Kid A has gone GQ on us. YaYa? Can we get a normal smile? Please?

But here’s a shot of Uncle Matty with a stroller.

And here’s one of some ladies with sticks on their heads.

And here’s one of Matty with some fruit. This is the fruit and veggie stall that I go to almost every day, and when they realized that Matty was gone, back to Canada for good, or at least for a long while, I could have sworn that they all took their hats off and laid them over their hearts. But that could have just been my imagination.

Yes, this has really helped me to cope with my post-Christmas blues.

Hello Ms. Ballerina.

Well Hello Yourself, Mr Rubik’s Cube!

Kid A and YaYa seriously played like this for an hour. I love it when they play like this, especially when I get to overhear what they’re saying.

(Rubik: “Do you want to watch Cars?”

Flexible Ballerina Girl: “No, not really. There aren’t any girls in Cars.”)

And it’s better than someone “accidentally” getting kicked in the face every two minutes. Wrestling. Ugh. I mean, I guess it’s okay. And my hearing went years ago from the shrieking, so that’s okay too.

(Things I am loving these days!)

This little guy came to visit us the other day, landing on my friend’s skirt, and then flitting over to this curtain, where he posed nicely for me. He’s not so little, though. His wing span was almost as long as my hand.

I have sick kids. They’re not too bad, but the weather has changed again and it seems that when the weather changes, flu comes. At least that’s what Jaya told me. But she also told me that snails are poisonous and I shouldn’t let YaYa play with them. (Not true.) Anyways, whatever the reason, the poor Superstar Husband and the three older kids are sick. They don’t let it bother them all that much. They’re just a little more clingy and they don’t want to eat.

YaYa woke up last night to go to the bathroom. Let me say that again. YaYa woke up out of her sleep all by her ownself to go to the bathroom last night. Except she did come to get me. But she WOKE UP. This has never happened. I remember bragging about what a good sleeper she was, back when she was a small toddler, and how someone said dolefully, “Those are the kids who have problems with bedwetting,” (imagine Eeyore’s voice) and how I thought, Well gee, Puddleglum, thanks for bursting my bubble. But then he was right.

I blame Haight St. I blame the room over the street and the room over the alley where we lived when she was a baby, next to Amoeba Records on Haight and Stanyan, where everything sounded as though hundreds of people were yelling outside at all hours of the night, and where the bouncer kicked everyone out of the club across the street at 2:30 every night and then stood on the street yelling, “Go, GO, GO” in a booming voice to get them to disperse, presumably so they wouldn’t bother the neighbors. (!) Where she had to learn to sleep like a sleepy sloth just for self-preservation.

I think this “waking up” speaks well of days ahead, although I am only tentatively thinking this.

Of course, Leafy took his turn and wet the bed last night (he doesn’t usually) and the baby of course was soaking in his cloth diapers, but two out of four isn’t bad, right?! Right.

Let’s just look at that moth again. Mmmmmm. Pretty.

(New post on making chapatti on Fly Fishes Fly!)

Right before I had Leafy, I took some time to write out all of my birth stories. It was a good preparation for another birth experience, and I felt so happy reading through them again, just now.

If you are interested, you can read them too.

The Blackberry Baby

The Ladybug Baby

The Redwood Baby

All of our kids have been born in memorable places, at memorable times. We’ve been blessed by their arrivals, three sweet times, and it helps me through my hip pain (have I mentioned my hip pain?) and general complete discomfort right now to read about the wonderful end results of this thing called pregnancy.

Of course, I do have the kids themselves to remind me of the joys of babies. The kids, with their love and cuddles and sweetness and demanding voices and shrieking and fighting and running the opposite way when I am too big to get up and run after them (Leafy). Oh. Um. Sorry. I may be a little exhausted right now.

Seriously, I know that I am a woman blessed, and my kids are my favorite people in the world.

Now, if only I had a little more energy…

(Chinua snapped the photo, a few weeks back.)